Grape Sour Punch Straws Are Actually Back, You Guys

In our series, Flashback Fridays, we take a look at our favorite blast-from-the-past foods—still living, some long dead. Cue the nostalgia.

One of my oldest friends has been the pickiest eater of all time for as long as I've known her. Pizza? She likes it plain. Pasta? Butter or bust. Cupcakes? Vanilla—always. Candy? ...Grape Sour Punch Straws.

I never understood how she could stand to put down packs of those straws at a time, because the rest of what she'd eat was objectively delicious, though not very adventurous. I truly didn't get how someone with so many qualifications around her food would overlook sweet and reliable cherry for bitter and medicinal grape. And then I tried one at her insistence, and It. Was. Awesome.

Sure, there were undertones of amoxycillin all through those chewy, chewy bites, but they were, like, comforting ones. And once you got past the "am I eating something that's...good for me?" vibes of it all, you could focus on the piercing sourness and the deep sweetness that overwhelmed any and all other flavor. In short, you were left with a bite of indescribable mouth-puckering nothingness that felt really good but was actually so, so bad. Who wouldn't want to eat such candy deception? Who!?

Well. Quite a few people, it turns out. While I was immediately a cherry-to-grape convert, and have remained so throughout the years of grape's absence on shelves, a PR person for the candy confirmed in a recent email it was the grape flavor's association with cough syrup in the '90s that "obviously didn’t sit well with most...This common association definitely took it off the shelves."

And yet, it was those same '90s monsters who decried the flavor that have been all up on the webz asking for the flavor back. Whether it's that their palates have matured, they're just nostalgic for some good old-fashioned weird candy, or that they just now crave something they believe to not be terrible whilst otherwise eating well, "the same demographic (millennials) that was initially thought to have led to its demise are now the folks on social media screaming for it back."

So it is back! And people everywhere who are not just myself and my darling, picky friend are undoubtedly thrilled! And with the constant influx of re-emerged old-school candy by popular demand, it'll hopefully remain on shelves forever!

That is, until Gen Z gets ahold of the stuff. Oh god, they're gonna hate it so hard.

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